


A Tablespoon of Feather

by HakureiRyuu



Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon - All Media Types
Genre: Anxiety Attacks, Because I can, Beholderverse, Depression, Gen, Medication, Parental Abuse, adventures spanning multiple regions, writing as therapy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-02-01
Updated: 2017-01-25
Packaged: 2018-03-10 00:16:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 10,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3269615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HakureiRyuu/pseuds/HakureiRyuu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"These are not my stars."</p><p>The words slipped out of her mouth before their full impact hit her. <i>These are not my stars!</i> She started trembling as her eyes darted frantically across the sky, searching for something, anything she could recognize. But there were no Dippers, no Pegasus, no Cassiopeia... nothing was familiar. <i>Orion. Any idiot can find Orion.</i> There was one noticeable line of four stars (not three), but the rest of the constellation was kind of all over the place, and there was nothing even resembling Taurus or Gemini anywhere near it. </p><p><i>Am I on the other side of the</i> world<i>??</i></p><p> </p><p>((Side-story to <i>Eyes of the Beholder</i>, by Isis_the_Sphinx, but you don't need to read it to understand. Probably.))</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. i. trigger, intent, now drown

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Eyes of the Beholder](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1804825) by [Isis_the_Sphinx](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Isis_the_Sphinx/pseuds/Isis_the_Sphinx). 



> This is a side-story to Eyes of the Beholder, by Isis_the_Sphinx. I shoehorned my own character into her story, and she graciously accepted, only I have too much plot in my head to confine to a minor character, so now we're gonna spin off on our own significantly-less-epic adventures. 
> 
> Updates will be sporadic, depending on how fast I write, and also on how fast Isis writes, because I will not post anything that would be a spoiler to her story.
> 
> Warnings for mental illness, self-medication, and legitimately crippling anxiety. 
> 
> Enjoy!

There were stars overhead as she blearily blinked her eyes open, but that was nothing new. What confused her was her lack of a sleeping bag, and she wondered dazedly if someone had stolen it right off of her while she was sleeping. She wasn't too cold yet, so it couldn't have been long ago. She shook her head and slowly pushed herself upright with one arm, the other hand rubbing the sleep from her eyes. The thought of confrontation made her stomach curl up in nervousness, but there was no way she could sleep without some sort of covering, and she might be able to catch whoever took it if the half-moon light was bright enough to-

The moon was full. _What?_ She blinked, looked around, and looked up again. _How long was I out?_

The first shot of panic, a warning jolt, jumped up her spine. Had she been drugged, to sleep so long? But no, that would mean she was down for two weeks or more; she was hungry, but not that hungry. And the idea of someone hauling out an IV and a bag of glucose just for a quick theft or even a kidnapping was a bit too far-fetched even for her paranoid imagination.

 _Alright_ , she told herself in her most piercing we-are-going-to-be-rational-today voice. _Stay calm. First, inventory._ She still had her shoes, that was a major plus. It seemed her handbag was gone along with her sleeping bag, but her cargo vest was still on underneath her zipped-up hoodie, and it contained her college ID, insurance card, a small wad of emergency cash, an almost-full bottle of citalopram tablets, a comb, a pocketknife, and a few photos. Everything she would need to get back to civilization, as long as she managed it quickly. 

Shaking slightly, she stood up and glanced around the clearing. It looked somehow wrong to her, but she put that down to everything looking different in the darkness. _I came in from the east, and the moon is_ there _, so the way back to the spot with the park benches should be... this way._ She started walking.

She stopped walking when she almost immediately stumbled onto what looked like a rough dirt road.

_The heck?_

This was absolutely not supposed to be here. She had slept in this area of the park many times, and she always made certain to settle down well away from paths in order to avoid thieves and worse - not that it seemed to have helped tonight. She was sure she knew the park like the back of her hand, but... _The moon's pretty high in the sky, maybe I got its position wrong?_ She looked up again. The moon was definitely on an angle, though not much of one. _If the moon's there, then the north star ought to be..._

_Ought to..._

_...be..._

"These are not my stars."

The words slipped out of her mouth before their full impact hit her. _These are not my stars!_ She started trembling as her eyes darted frantically across the sky, searching for something, anything she could recognize. But there were no Dippers, no Pegasus, no Cassiopeia... nothing was familiar. _Orion. Any idiot can find Orion._ There was one noticeable line of _four_ stars (not three), but the rest of the constellation was kind of all over the place, and there was nothing even resembling Taurus or Gemini anywhere near it.

 _Am I on the other side of the_ world _??_

She started walking again, stiffly. The path was north-south, not east-west as she had expected, but it had to lead _somewhere_.

_Please god let it lead somewhere..._

After an hour the dirt road gave way to weeds and wet grass poking through, and puddles from some recent rain (there was news of a slight drought in her area when she last went to sleep). Some of them were ankle-deep or more, and soaked through her worn sneakers until her toes were numb. No bushes or thorns caught her, as the "path" was still very wide and clearly used, but the constant rustling in the tall grass made her wary, and she skirted around it at every opportunity even if that meant tromping through puddles.

After two more hours she was exhausted. Tension and fear had pulled every muscle in her body whipcord-taut, and the strain was taking its toll. Rain had begun to fall in a light mist some time ago as slate-colored clouds covered the sky, dropping the temperature just enough to make her constantly shiver. Even if she didn't recognize the stars above her head, at least she could still find and follow specific patterns. Now she couldn't even tell whether or not she was walking in a straight line!

Her throat closed up painfully, and she hunched over with her arms closing toward her chest. _Don't cry, don't you dare cry..._ She trudged over to a lonely tree on the soggy ground, every step a struggle. Once underneath, she took out her bottle of citalopram, carefully pulled out one of the small tablets with trembling fingers, and swallowed it dry. Then she swallowed again, and again, trying and failing to work out the knot in her throat and ease the hammering in her chest. So what if she was cold and lost and utterly abandoned with all her supplies stolen? So what if she was potentially drugged, kidnapped, and left to die here under unfamiliar stars? It was no reason to cry like a child, or freak out like a lunatic. No reason at all! _Stupid, useless, worthless, hopeless..._

Filtered moonlight reflected on eyes in the darkness.

Her breathing choked to a stop, and she froze. The large, slanted eyes were at about hip-height, just the right size for a wolf or a nocturnal wildcat of some kind. They were bright red, uncannily still, and pointed directly at her, and she couldn't move. She knew _what_ to do, she was internally screaming at herself to do it but just. Could not.

The creature stepped into the light streaming down from a part in the clouds, and her breathing abruptly restarted with a gasp of surprise.

The first word that came to mind to describe what stood before her was _dog_ , followed closely by _goat_ , but it was clearly neither of those things. This creature, whatever it was, had thick white fur covering most of its body, with brilliantly glowing red eyes set into a dark, unreadable face. Its short snout and curious expression gave it a disturbingly human-looking face, and it appeared to have a single, dark, sythe-like horn in addition to the prominent claws on its four padded feet.

It was one of the most _beautiful_ things she had ever seen. Even as it slowly stepped towards her, she could only stand in raw admiration of the grace with which it moved, the absolute self-assurance. It stopped a foot or two away from her, just inside the cover of the tree's outter branches, and looked her directly in the eyes. She stared right back; she knew how to do this at least. Never lose a staring contest with an animal unless it starts growling.

This thing didn't growl. It didn't so much as rustle the grass as it turned down the widening path, walked a few steps, and looked back at her expectantly.

She looked that way as well, then back at the creature. "You want me to follow you?"

It nodded. She jumped back, astonished. "You... understand me?"

Another nod. She realized her mouth was agape and shut it. "A-Alright then."

Following in the creature's footsteps, she picked her way through the maze of tall grass and trees through thin paths of dry, firm ground that couldn't even be seen in the darkness. Just when she was beginning to wonder if the dirt road even existed anymore, they came to a wide log bridge over a small but deep pond. It was very solid, if uneven, and her still-numb feet tripped her up a few times. But her guide stopped and waited for her to get up every time until, just on the other side of the bridge was _finally_ the dirt path - wide and smooth and dry.

She about sobbed with relief.

"Th-Thank you," she said, still shaking, but not as hard as before. She pointed down the path. "There are people that way? Maybe a town?"

The creature - there was no way she could think of it as an animal - nodded again. She was almost used to that.

Some instinct told her to bow, so she did. "Thank you," she said again, "for all your help. I don't know if anyone will ever believe me if I tell them about you, but I know I'll never forget you." She rose and started walking. 

The creature started walking as well, in the same direction. She stopped, and it stopped and stared at her again.

"Um... are you going that way too?"

No response except a slow blink.

"I'll be fine. You've already done so much to take me this far, I couldn't possibly-"

The creature snorted much like the horses she knew when they were exasperated with her, and started walking again, right down the middle of the road.

Bewildered, she obediently followed.

-

The trees grew bigger and bigger as they went on, thick as the giant redwoods she had only seen in pictures, the tops of some vanishing into the cloud cover. Only these clearly weren't redwood trees, she thought as she laid a hand on one of the massive trunks. The bark was not a feathery burgundy, but a sort of mottled green and beige, thin and peeling in layers, almost like a breed of birch. She wracked her mind for what kind of tree these could be - a baobab would match, the color, but not the shape...

Abruptly, the path widened into a large clearing filled with squat, cylindrical buildings that were unmistakably houses. She grinned and quickened her pace. Just ahead was what looked like a road-sign, stating, "Fortree City: The Treetop City that Frolics with Nature!"

_Treetop?_

She looked up, and gasped in awe.

Just above her head, and upward many more layers, was a crisscrossing lattice of suspended wood- and rope-bridges, some held taut by framework or connections to branches above, others swaying gently in a downward curve. More cylindrical dwellings perched high in the branches on sturdy platforms attached to branches at all levels, or set into the tree itself. Several tree trunks actually appeared to be hollowed out and made into buildings in their own right, all without disturbing the natural habitat of the canopy or the forest floor.

If it had been a little more elegant and fancifully decorated, she would have called it Lothlorien. As it was, it was nevertheless amazing. She hadn't even known treehouse cities like this could exist!

Her mysterious guide gently butted her leg to bring her attention quite literally back down to earth. With a soft 'oh' of embarrassment, she meekly followed as it led her to one of the only buildings with actual angles she had seen so far. It had a red-tiled roof with a white circular design inset, a sliding glass door, and a brightly lit sign that said "Pokemon Center".

 _What center??_ Perhaps it was a shelter of some kind, albeit with a really odd name.

She gritted her teeth - she was used to this, but it never stopped being humiliating - and walked inside.

The door opened and closed with a slight _woosh_ , and a mechanical tone like a doorbell signaled her arrival. The bright halogen lights might have been garish, but the walls and floor were a gentle transition of orange and white, and it managed to look cheery without being too sterile. Thankfully, she seemed to be the only one in this large waiting area, so she bit her lip and walked over to the counter at the back. There was a bell to ring for assistance, but she hesitated over it, suddenly feeling very foolish. It was very late, after all - what if they didn't have any beds left? Or what if this wasn't a shelter at all, and she just-

"Welcome to the Fortree City Pokemon Center!" a bright, feminine voice called out, making her nearly jump out of her skin. A woman appeared in one of the doorways behind the counter, smiling brightly and wearing... some 1940s nurse's getup? Definitely not scrubs, but her hat had a Red Cross on it, so that was something. "How may I be of assistance?" the woman asked, "Do your pokemon need any medical attention, or do you just want a bed for the night?"

"M-My..." she stammered. At least a third of that question made little sense to her current understanding of how this was supposed to work. "I mean, _yes_ , I would like a bed, i-if you have one, but-"

The woman grinned. "Well of course we _have_ one, dear. We always make room for travelling pokemon trainers! And I take it that's your Absol?"

 _My what?!_ she thought as she looked around wildly, throat clenching again. Then she froze as a thick ruff of fur came up under her hand. Her guardian from the forest made a show of nuzzling her hand with exaggerated affection, then glared at her pointedly. Taking the hint, she snapped her gaze back to the woman's face. "Yes," she squeaked, "he's with me."

The woman smiled again. "Wonderful. If you'll come with me, I can get you set up for the night. You must have had an exhausting day, to have stayed on the road so late! Oh!" She spun on a heel to face her newest guest. "What's your name, dear?"

The girl hastily looked down. "Ariadne."

"Well, Ariadne, let's find you some dry pajamas. I won't have you catching cold under my roof."

-

A mere 30 minutes later, Ariadne was perched on the edge of a bunk bed in a large room full of other bunk beds, ramrod straight with a thick woolen blanket around her shoulders and half a bowl of oatmeal with maple and cinnamon clutched in her hands. It was delicious, but the taste didn't really register, and half was all she'd managed to force down so far. She was clean, dry, and dressed in warm, long-sleeved pajamas. Her own clothes were in a washing machine, and the nurse who worked overnight assured her that they would be dry by morning. It hadn't been hard to cobble together a story about why she had next to nothing on her person - her initial assumption that she had been robbed in the night worked just fine. But Ariadne was beginning to suspect that there was something else altogether going on.

Homeless shelters or youth hostels this sparklingly clean were uncommon, but not impossible. It was also odd, but still acceptable, that no one here had even heard of the institution on her college ID - it was just a little community college, after all. What was really throwing her off, and might potentially keep her up at night for some time, was the fact that not only were pets _allowed_ in this shelter/Center/whateveritwas, but that they were apparently a _requirement for entry._

She looked at the white-furred creature curled up on the foot of the bed, seemingly asleep, and furrowed her brow even as she felt her stomach unwind as the good, hot food did its job. No, 'pet' was clearly not the proper word for this thing, this... _Absol_ , the nurse had called it. That was the other thing: that everyone she had met here had looked at the Absol, a feline-canine with a rigid sharp tail and a sythe for a horn, and thought it was perfectly normal. Expected, even.

_Unless I finally cracked for real and I'm just seeing things now... but no, I saw one of the nurses talking to it, like it was a person..._

"He," she remembered, causing the Absol to stir awake look at her curiously. "The nurse mentioned you were a 'he', right?"

The Absol nodded. Ariadne took a breath, and let it out slowly. "Okay... and you clearly understand everything I'm saying, so..." But against all rationality, all the questions clawing at the inside of Ariadne's brain fell silent. Instead, she asked, "Is Absol just what you're called, or is it your name?"

He tilted his head, and Ariadne grimaced. "Okay, terrible phrasing. Is it alright if I just call you Absol though? I don't think I'll be able to come up with anything that suits you better, not right now.

Absol nodded absently and closed his eyes again. Ariadne placed her bowl on the shelf above the headboard, then placed her pillow at the foot of the bed and laid down on her stomach, head tilted to face Absol's. In the quietest voice she could manage that still came out as something of a squeak, she whispered, "What I am doing here, Absol?"

"I'll tell you what you're _not_ doing," called a disgruntled male voice from across the room, "letting me get my damn sleep! I've got a gym battle tomorrow!"

Ariadne flinched violently and curled in on herself, trying to count each breath. As such, she missed another voice responding with a quieter, "So do I, and right now you're being louder than she is." She did, however, feel Absol uncurl slightly and nudge closer to her, laying his head on her back to glare intimidatingly at the interloper. After a few more mutterings and shifting of blankets, the room fell silent again.

Ariadne did not move, only kept her face buried in the fur of Absol's side, keeping her eyes squeezed shut and her blanket clutched tightly about her, and stubbornly refusing to let her shoulders tremble as she cried.

Maybe in the morning, she would wake up in her sleeping bag under the stars she knew.


	2. ii. high strung, say x-amount of words

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Information seeking.

She opened her eyes, saw white, and closed them again.

An hour and a half later, Ariadne woke for the second time, but still couldn't quite move. So she simply lay still, listening to the hustle and bustle of others in the dormitory getting on their way. The sounds blurred in and out, ebbing and flowing just slightly above her ability to parse their meaning.

"...heard Winona specializes in flying-types, so I made sure to...

"...anyone seen my Awakening? I know I left..."

"...visiting my friend Kylee, who just got her first..."

"...keeps an _entire flock_ of..."

This is where she like to be, in the nebulous boundary between asleep and awake, where she could float on a cushion of semiconsciousness and observe the world without having to be a part of it. More and more people shuffled around, conversed excitedly about the upcoming day, and left, until it was just her, the gently breathing mass of fur at her side, and a starkly empty room.

Ariadne opened her eyes once more, and sighed in disappointment as the morning fog around her mind dissipated like it always did. She stretched slightly, dragged her legs over the side of the bed with some effort, and pushed herself up. The blue tiled floor was cold against her bare feet, so she pulled them back up and under her to sit on the edge of the mattress cross-legged.

Against her will, her eyes slowly slid toward the creature still sleeping on her bed, who had presumably slept next to her all night long.

_Yep, still there. Sythe-horn and all._

In daylight, even while asleep, Absol looked no less amazing to her, no less patently magical. Before she could censor herself, Ariadne reached out a hand and smoothed the creature's stark-white fur. It was thick and springy, and longer in some places than others. Contrary to her initial impression, his face and horn were covered in fur too - dark grayish blue in color, and very short and thin, almost like peach fuzz. Absol opened one bleary eye as she carefully examined his sythe's blade, then shifted himself and dozed some more. Ariadne smiled.

"Oh good, you're awake," a voice called from the doorway, causing Ariadne to jump slightly. It was a woman in the same uniform as the nurse from last night, different, but similar-looking, as though they might have been related. "Sorry if I startled you," the nurse said warmly. "The night-duty nurse said to let you sleep, since you came in so late, but it's almost 11:30, so I figured I'd check on you."

"Um, yes, I'm awake," Ariadne replied quietly. "He's not though."

The nurse ducked her head to see under the top bunk to where Absol lay, and smiled. "That's to be expected, since most dark-types are more-or-less nocturnal. Just give him another couple of hours and he'll be right as rain!"

Ariadne nodded, trying to process both the implications of "dark" as a "type" and the nurses' continued nonchelance at the sight of this beautiful, mythical beast. "Is there a library or computer database in the area that I can use?" she asked. "Or even just something connected to the internet?"

"There's a PC terminal in the lobby," the nurse replied, "but Fortree doesn't have a formal library. People tend to just order whatever books they need from other towns."

"Okay. And, um..." Ariadne picked at the collar of her borrowed pajamas mutely.

The nurse laughed and pointed at a hallway on the far end of the dormitory. "Your clothes are in one of the dryers in the basement downstairs, first door down that hall to your left. And you missed breakfast, but lunch will be served in 10 minutes in the cafeteria if you're hungry. Anything else?"

Ariadne considered, then asked, "Do you run this place all by yourself?"

"In shifts with my sisters, but yes, and I love every minute of it!"

"It's beautiful," Ariadne said with a smile, "maybe the nicest shelter I've ever seen."

"My!" she laughed, "Well I wouldn't go _that_ far. Our Center is actually quite small for a city of Fortree's size, and with a Gym in town to boot! You should see my second cousin's place in Goldenrod City; now _that's_ a Pokemon Center!" 

Ariadne tilted her head at that one, surprised by all that it implied. "Well... thank you - and your sister - for all your help."

The nurse smiled. "Not a problem at all. Give me a shout if you need anything else."

-

Clean, dressed, and fed, Ariadne once again entered the brightly lit lobby. There were more people now that before - some spread about on the various couches, others standing either singly or in pairs. Ariadne kept her eyes down and tried to be inconspicuous as she spotted and headed for the terminal the nurse had mentioned. 

It looked more like a cross between a phone booth and a standing arcade game than anything else, but at least the keyboard was in a format she recognized, and touching the trackpad made the screen come alive as the computer booted up. 

On the screen were two options, one large button prompting the user to "Insert Pokedex to Log In", the other a smaller link at the bottom offering to let the user "Log In as Guest User". Ariadne selected the latter. Much to her relief, this brought up what looked like a standard computer desktop, with a start button, a recycle bin, and an icon for internet access. There was also a tab that looked a bit like Skype and seemed to be meant to be used in conjunction with the payphone-style telephone hooked to the monitor, but she ignored that for now.

_First thing's first, I suppose._ She opened a browser, which defaulted to a search engine, and entered "Pokemon Center".

If nothing else, the connection was a good one, and results poured in by the thousands. The first one was an advertisement for Fortree's Center, which boasted a laundromat to wash your stuff after a long trek down the rainy, muddy roads to the remote city (already proven convenient), but scanning the results overall seemed to confirm what the nurse had implied earlier: that Centers such as these were an expected amenity in nearly every town. 

That alone kind of blew Ariadne's mind. What she had thought was an especially clean and kind homeless shelter was actually actually some kind of government-supported facility for people from _all_ walks of life, as long as they were travelling with at least one pokemon.

_Pokemon._ As long as the term appeared culturally pervasive enough to warrant municipal buildings and taxpayer services, she might as well look up that one too...

She blinked. _Holy shit._

Results in the _billions_ , and judging by the first couple of pages, maybe a third of the results were simply places and buildings _named after_ pokemon. Others looked to be extensive archives of where different pokemon could be found, or lists of abilities, most of which looked patently absurd. And the image search... didn't bear thinking about. _Is this even real?!_

"Excuse me lady," said a small voice behind her. Ariadne turned to see a boy of maybe nine or ten standing directly behind her and looking somewhat sheepish. "Are you almost finished with that? Only, I've got a lesson in a few minutes and I need to get my Tailow..."

Ariadne had almost no idea what was meant by the latter part of that sentence, but promised the boy she would only be a moment longer. 

_I don't have time to look into all of this too deeply_ , she thought. So without further thought she input "New York City directions".

There were fourteen results. Total. Twelve of them were articles about some place called New _Mauville_ City, and the other two were public record registrations for trainers with "York" in their names.

What.

Frowning and ignoring the sinking feeling in her gut, she clicked around until she found something akin to google maps, and zoomed all the way out. 

The little _You Are Here_ icon was situated firmly in the central north of what looked to be a rather large landmass, which was directly south of a much bigger landmass and east of a bigger landmass than that. She recognized none of them, and they were all on much too huge a scale to be simply undiscovered somehow. Her panicked whisper from last night, the first words she spoke in this place, came back to her: those were not her stars, and this was not her world. This was another planet entirely.

Obvious reactions like shock and fear flew as the night had - there and gone. Only three simple truths remained to her.

_I am alone._

_I have nothing._

_No one will ever believe me._

In something of a haze, Ariadne closed out everything, erased her search history, and surrendered the computer to the boy behind her. She barely heard his cheerful "Thanks!" even as she made her face smile at him in acknowledgement. And as she calmly walked back to the dormitory and sat down stiffly on her bed, another truth came to her: she only had a six-month supply of her medication. 

She reached for her prescription bottle with jerky movements. Two hundred tablets fit inside, and she got the bottle about three weeks ago, so probably twenty were taken already. A hundred and eighty pills, at one a day as prescribed. No more than six months until she ran out, and then...

_I can't go back to that._

She got up, started pacing. Maybe she could get another prescription with a doctor here? They obviously had healthcare, but how much background information would they require from a new patient? Maybe she could fake a background somehow? Did they even have the proper chemicals on this planet? Given that so few plants were familiar to her, Ariadne wouldn't be surprised if the entire ecosystem was off on this strange planet. The trees, the rocks, the oceans, the not-animals...

A high pitched whine escaped her throat, which she hastily clamped down, and Absol started awake to stare at her.

Ariadne took a deep breath, and then another. 

Maybe she was alone, but there was no way she could do this alone. She needed support, she needed guidance. Above all, she needed information - cultural norms, local mythology, ecosystems, biology, the goddamn laws of physics for crying out loud! She was living something so perfectly impossible that she lacked the words to describe how outrageous it was! Wrong stars, wrong planet, wrong universe if some of the photos she saw online were to be believed!

Fear was catching up with her. _Backpedal - you don't know anything for certain, yet._

Absol was still there, looking serenely up at her from his place on the bed. For now, she wasn't alone.

The bottle in her hand was cylindrical and hard, and growing warm from where she was squeezing it. For now, she didn't have nothing.

Ariadne opened the bottle, took out a tablet, and swallowed it.

_Day One._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am a slow writer dealing with many of the same problems as Ariadne (minus the whole mysteriously-transported-to-another-dimension thing), so infrequent updates are going to be A Thing.


	3. iii. solar, bipolar, panic disorder

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With my third chapter, you all now have a rough idea of my update speed. This one is longer at least...? OTL
> 
> Mind the warning tags.

Fortree City Gym was _enormous_ , climbing at least as high as the massive trees around it, possibly higher. And "climbing" was in fact the operative word, because a large portion of the huge rectangular structure was made up of a wide, incredibly steep set of stairs from the ground all the way to the roof. A handful of people were milling around the foot of the staircase, and she could spot one person about a quarter of the way up.

Steeling herself, Ariadne walked toward the group. Nearest to her was a young boy with a relatively large bird on his shoulder - the same boy she had spoken to before, she realized - who was chatting animatedly with preteen girl with short dark hair and a bolo around her neck who looked to be some sort of girl scout. Ariadne headed for them.

"Hello," she said before she could stop herself, "um, is that staircase the only way inside?"

The girl scout's smile had a competitive edge to it. "Depends," she replied. "Are you here to challenge Winona?"

"N-not remotely," Ariadne stammered. She was almost certain that "challenge" meant something very significant here, and whatever it was, she wanted no part in it. "I just. Um. I'm sort of in trouble, and I was told..." She glanced down at the Absol sitting silently at her side, then back up. "I was told the local Gym Leader was the person to ask for help if I needed it."

"Oh!" the girl said. "Well in that case... Hey! Zachary!" She turned away and beckoned someone over to them. "Come here for a second!"

A brown-haired man with a tie that Ariadne could only describe as "nondescript" parted from the rest of the group at the stairs and came their way. "Yes, Kylee? What's the matter?"

"This girl says she needs to speak to Winona. She's not a challenger though, she just needs help with something."

Zachary turned toward Ariadne with a smile and said, "Of course. Right this way," and turned smartly on his heel.

Ariadne followed, astonished that she wasn't brushed off. Zachary opened a concealed door around the back of the giant staircase and ushered her and Absol into what looked like a modified elevator compartment. As soon as the door closed behind them, she felt a jerk of movement sideways, then up, then sideways again. Somehow, after everything else - and also given the colossal size of the building - a goddamn Wonkavator didn't surprise her. 

"Winona's just finishing up her morning routine in the aviaries," Zachary said, filling up the silence. "It'll be another half-hour or so before any new trainers reach the top of the staircase, so she'll have time to see you."

Ariadne swallowed and nodded, and focused her gaze on Absol, who sat like a statue.

Then the elevator doors opened, and she gasped involuntarily. 

There was a narrow corridor before them that stretched left and right, but the far wall of that corridor was made of nothing but windows. Broad and seemingly glassless, light streamed in with no filter, and moss-covered branches and vines wove in and out. Outside was a cacophany of color and light, with tropical-looking flowers and large unrecognizable fruits growing in graceful rows, an artificial stream running down the center, and connifers and deadwood trees piercing the sky. 

Roosted in the trees or else flying about were very quick glimpses of blue, white, or both, and all of them as large as the bird that boy had on his shoulder or bigger, though she couldn't make out the details. The sheer _noise_ was incredible, though - like an entire orchestra of woodwinds tuning up for a performance, their off-kilter harmony broken every now and then by a shriek or a squawk. 

Zachary watched her reaction with amusement. "Winona likes for people to be impressed with what she's built here, and rightfully so. Come, she's just over there." 

Ariadne glanced to the right at Zachary's gesture and saw a very small, slight woman in a pale blue jumpsuit and an aviator helmet leaning out the window into the aviary with one arm outstretched in front of her. She let out a short, high-pitched whistle through her teeth, and out of one of the denser trees swooped a bird that was easily three feet long and boasting a wingspan almost as broad as the woman was tall. It looked to be a giant version of the blue bird that boy had had on his shoulder earlier, given the proportions and patterns of red on its face, but where the boy's bird had been a deep navy blue, this was more of a washed-out teal. 

With a graceful backwing that seemed to release a shower of colorful motes of light, the enormous bird landed carefully on the tiny woman's outstretched forearm. Then she turned toward Zachary and Ariadne with a smile and no indication whatsoever that holding up what looked to be well over fifty pounds of avian well outside her center of gravity was in any way difficult for her. 

"He's recovered very nicely, Zach," she said jauntily.

"Good to hear," Zachary nodded. "And has he learned not to overtax himself this time?"

The bird trilled and ruffled its feathers indignantly, and shuffled awkwardly up the woman's arm to rest more comfortably on her shoulder, and she and Zachary both laughed.

"Anyway," he said, turning to Ariadne again, "this is Winona, as you may have gathered. Winona, this young lady is..."

"Uh - Ariadne," she stammered, several beats late. "I, um. I don't know where I am, exactly, and I don't have anything, and -"

"Oh!" Winona interjected with a snap of her fingers. "The Pokemon Center actually did call to report a theft on the road last night. Was that you?"

"Well... yes."

Winona nodded. "I'll definitely have to give that area a better patrol. And I'll let Jenny down at the station to watch out for anyone trying to sell a bunch of camping gear at once."

A thousand different scenarios flashed through her mind of some innocent bystander selling off their old tents and camp stoves, getting arrested for no damn reason, getting hurt, beaten for resisting, losing their reputation or livelihood or even their lives if things got out of hand, just because Ariadne told a lie. She opened her mouth, but nothing happened, so she shut it and nodded. _...coward...liar...worthless..._

Zachary was nudging her gently. "I'm sorry?" she said.

"I said," Winona repeated, "is there anything I can do to help you get back on your feet in the meantime?"

Ariadne bit her lip, and during the pause, Absol butted her leg with a huff. She wondered briefly how absurd it was to be taken back to the fairy tales of her childhood, to take advice from magical animals, and thought maybe that would make her planned request sound less stupid when spoken aloud. 

"I need to go somewhere with an extensive library," she stated, perhaps a touch too loudly. "Somewhere I can find work for a while, so that I can..." _So that I can figure out what the hell this place is!_ "So I can start over," she finished. "I don't really have anyone I can go to. There's just me."

_I am alone._

Zachary looked at Winona. "I don't think we really have any openings here, but didn't Tate mention the Space Center was short-staffed last time he visited?"

Winona considered. "If I recall, he was just making a quip about not having enough people to run the gravity simulator whenever he wants to, but I can certainly call Jin and ask if he has any starting positions available." She turned to Ariadne again. "Is that acceptable to you? Do you feel like you could take a job at the Space Center?"

Ariadne balked. A job? Just like that? No questions, no references, and only her word that she even needed it? She glanced down at Absol, but he appeared to be washing his front paws without a single indication if he was paying attention to his surroundings. She looked back at Winona and answered, "I, uh. I had a job as a laboratory assistant for a while. And I learn pretty fast what's expected of me."

"Perfect!" Winona crowed. "I'll just-"

A loud _ding_ interrupted her. Ariadne jumped slightly. Winona just smiled and sighed slightly; the roc on her shoulder fluffed itself up and hummed a bit. "You'll have to excuse me, duty calls. Zach, go ahead and start the theatrics, I'll be right up."

Zachary bowed politely and jogged down the hall before entering a different elevator than the one they had come up in and vanishing from sight.

Winona reached into her pouch and pulled out a red-and-white sphere about an inch in diameter. Ariadne blinked and the sphere was the size of a softball.

"You sure you're ready for this, Swellow?" the leader asked the bird on her shoulder.

The bird - _Swellow, what a strange name_ \- gave a low, predatory shriek by way of reply.

Winona grinned back and held the sphere at eye level. "Then let's kick off your return to the arena in style - _return!_ "

In the blink of an eye, Swellow glowed red, then turned translucent, and was gone.

Ariadne's mind ground to a halt.

_It vanished..._

She did not hear what Winona said to her before she waved cheerily and sprinted in the direction Zachary had gone.

_...into thin air..._

She did not feel the rough-hewn stone of the wall as she slid bonelessly against it.

_How did...? But it's just... this place, I... shit. Shitshitshit not now!_

She did not see Absol sliding away from her as her anxiety spiked. 

In fact, though her eyes were wide with uncontrolled terror, she couldn't see much of anything.

_("has it occurred to you that you could probably vanish into thin air and nobody would say anything?")_

The next thing she was consciously aware of was a piercing chime that penetrated right through the storm around her mind like a lightning bolt. The note continued on, at a pitch and volume that made Ariadne's eardrums buzz, and gradually her sight brightened and cleared as she came back into focus.

Perched on her knees and continuing to warble was a tiny cloud with a blue face. Or... a tiny blue face with cloud-like wings? The note emanating from its beak like a bell finally ended, and the little creature hopped slightly in place as it considered her with wide owlish eyes. 

Ariadne released the breath she hadn't known she'd been holding, and an exhausted shudder ran through her whole body. Absol nudged her shoulder with an expression that almost gave her another attack until she realized it was not a look of disapproval, but concern. 

"Oh, hell," she said. For some reason her throat felt raw. "I'm sorry, I... I'm sorry." Apologies were the only thing that ever seemed to come out of her. Ariadne bowed her head and scrubbed at her face, if only to give her twitching hands something to do. _Why why why..._ "Did anyone see me?" she finally asked.

Absol tilted his head.

"I mean besides you?" _Anyone I need to clunkily explain myself to and then spend the rest of my life avoiding?_

The thing on Ariadne's knees trilled again, drawing her attention back toward center. It was very cute, and if Ariadne didn't know better she'd say it was designed to be so - enormous eyes, tiny round beak, and so _spherically_ fluffy she couldn't even see its feet. Utterly nonthreatening. Wow.

She reached out a cautious hand, palm up. The fluffy cloud around the little blue face parted briefly into two distinct clouds on either side as it hopped into her hand, then settled back down. _Wings_ , Ariadne thought. _Another bird._ "I guess you came from the aviary too. Did you hear me?" _I try so hard to keep quiet, I'm supposed to be quiet, I'm sorry._

The little bird had a distinct lack of a neck, so it turned in place with another hop to look at Absol, chirped at him, then turned again to face Ariadne.

Ariadne looked between the two of them for a moment before it clicked. "You brought it to me?" she asked Absol.

Absol barked what sounded like an affirmative. Ariadne had to process that for a moment.

The low _ding!_ of the elevator's arrival startled her back. Winona arrived, stretching and looking pleased with herself. 

"Well that was a nice morning workout," the leader said, speaking to the red and white sphere in her hand. " _Breezed_ right through it, didn't we, Swellow!" A pause. "Okay, that one was weak. I'll find you some poffins later to make up for it. Now shoo!"

Another flash, this time of white, and Ariadne could hear the trees in the aviary rustle as the Swellow went back to its resting place. 

_(obviously it had occurred to her. it was repeated ad-nauseum after all.)_

Unbelievable.

Winona came around the corner bearing an exhilerated smile. "Sorry for the wait, but I think I've got you sorted out. I sent a voice-mail to Liza and Tate, who talked to their father Jin, and he asked around his staff until he ran into someone named Dr. Lydia, and _she_ said her last intern just transferred to Sinnoh to work with Professor Rowan, so...!" The leader motioned excitedly.

Ariadne got the distinct sense she was supposed to draw a conclusion from that information, but any facts that might have been imparted were immediately lost in the overwhelming _noise_ of Winona's speech to the girl's still-frayed senses.

"Wow, um... are you alright?"

Everything was so foggy, still. The little bird bounced in her hands again and chirped at the leader, and Ariadne blinked. 

"Should I go get -"

"I'm fine!" Ariadne all but shouted, heart suddenly hammering again. "I was - I had dozed off, it's fine, I'm fine, _I'm fine -_ " Absol sat down _hard_ in her lap, causing the little cloud-bird to leap upward and fly around their heads with squeaks of indignation, and Ariadne to stop digging herself in further and further.

The prolonged silence between girl and leader was utterly terrifying. Ariadne did not mistake the look on the other's face for concern; it couldn't be, _shouldn't_ be. Coming here was a mistake just like everything else. What if Winona decided she couldn't help someone like her? What if-?

"Mind if I sit?" Winona asked, gently.

Ariadne stared, eyes round and dilated. Her throat had stopped working, so by way of answer she shuffled sideways along the stone wall a few inches. 

Winona placed her back to the wall, crossed her legs, and sat on the floor with one graceful movement. She spared an assured half-grin for the stone-faced girl to her left, then reached a gentle hand upward to catch the still-irate flyer. "I see you've made good friends with this little Swablu," she said.

Ariadne turned her gaze slowly. _Swablu_ , she thought. _Like a cotton swab. And "blu". Hehe._

The leader rubbed the Swablu's tiny beak with a forefinger, causing it to wriggle and coo. "I keep a good-sized flock of bird pokemon here at my aviary," she said. "Students of mine who go on to become bird keepers or even ace trainers... I usually give them one of mine here to start off with. Especially if the pokemon in question seems to like them as much as this little one likes you."

Ariadne said nothing. The little Swablu bounced from Winona's hands back to her own knees and began sounding that high-pitched trill. The sound modulated downward, and with it the tightness in her chest. The soft cotton of Swablu's wings against her skin was far less alarming than Ariadne expected it to be.

"There, see?" came Winona's unexpected voice. Ariadne started, but not as much as previously. "Even your Absol thinks you two are a great match!" And, indeed, Absol was at her side, watching Ariadne as the little bird sang, wearing an expression that could only be described as self-satisfied.

"He... brought it to me," said Ariadne, her voice soft and hesitant.

"Well there you go, he must have wanted this little girl to be a part of your family."

Ariadne fell silent, frowning slightly.

Winona pressed, "Do you think you would want to keep her?"

She stared at nothing for a long time, the memory of music playing in her mind - not only birdsong, but a piano, dark and silent. It was decorative, her mother had said, but she knew what magic it could make when it was let loose on the world. When it wasn't sequestered in the center of a blindingly empty room.

In spite of herself, Ariadne nodded.

Swablu trilled. Winona smiled.

-

She kept reaching a hand into her partially-zipped hoodie pocket to touch the little bi-colored sphere that nestled there. There were actually a lot of formalities involved in transferring custody of the Swablu. Said formalities were only made more difficult by her lack of a pokedex, a handy device which she had surmised functioned as both identification and database, one that updated itself with every new change. Ariadne wanted one immediately.

It was truly astonishing how few questions were asked throughout all of this. Her name, certainly. Her hometown - "N-New Mauville City...?" she had blurted out in a quiet stutter; Zachary had replied that yes, he knew of Mauville City, and Ariadne let the matter drop. A few other simple matters like her age (22) and profession (lab assistant, apparently), and that was that. Nothing about social security numbers or level of education, no invasive questions about her family history. By the time a temporary ID card and a letter from Winona to Jin had been placed into her hands, Ariadne was feeling a good deal more confident about actually asking a doctor about her medication, assuming she found one.

"Now, it's a bit of a trip from here to Mossdeep City," Winona was explaining animatedly. "The most direct route is to fly from here to Lillycove, and then take the ferry across the bay. From there you just follow the signs to the Space Center - there's really no missing the giant rocket launcher."

Ariadne could vaguely recall those locations from her brief look through the geography program on the Pokemon Center's computer. She took her hand out of her pocket and placed it on Absol's head to pet him there. "So I need to get to an airport?" she asked.

"Hm? No, no, Slateport or Rustboro City are completely out of your way. Besides," Winona pulled out another pokeball and winked. "My Skarmory is _much_ faster!"

The leader tossed the little ball up into the sky with a dramatic flourish, and out from the ensuing lightshow came something enormous that gleamed in the afternoon sunlight.

Ariadne covered a gasp with her hands in an abrupt rush of awe and delight. "Oh, you _beauty_..." she whispered, stepping forward to examine the marvelous creature. "Oh, you pretty, pretty thing..." All silver steel and hot reflected light, touching the Skarmory's near-weightless metallic feathers was like holding a piece of the sun. Tiny inflexible down-feathers slotted together like the most intricate plate-mail all down its body, from the base of its long, swan-like neck to its exposed talons. Its tail was curved and wickedly sharp, and made of one solid, gleaming metallic piece that seemed to twist and twitch in all directions on something like a ball joint. Equally solid armored rings covered that long neck, flexing and sliding over one another to allow for movement. The joint where the neck met its head was a fragile-looking thing, slender and bent, though a thick armor plate with a wind-smoothed horn of its own protected both head and neck well enough. Its quick, yellow eyes underneath the plating saw better looking down from the sky than looking up, which indicated that it was a predator - as though the row of blunt, triangular teeth no bird ever had didn't prove that well enough. Yet the angle of its beak seemed almost like a grin than anything else, and Ariadne couldn't help but grin back.

Its wings were most magnificent of all. From the size of the beast, one would certainly think it was flightless, but a fourteen-foot wingspan would give any skeptic pause. These feathers were almost six inches across at their broadest, polished mirror-bright to reflect the deep red of the floor beneath them... or perhaps they were made of a different compound than the rest? Ariadne ran a hand down to the edge of one wing, the other hand still gently scratching the Skarmory's chest. The wing-feathers were paper-thin and rigid, relying instead on their loose hinges at each feather's root for movement and control. Delicate striations and grooves allowed them to slot together, and smoothed out again at the wingtips where the feathers narrowed to razor-points. They probably also helped with sensing air currents as the wind passed between feathers... Experimentally, Ariadne blew gently over one of them, then brushed a finger over the grooves. Skarmory made a huffing noise, and fidgeted as though tickled.

A similar sound behind her made Ariadne jump and abruptly flush as red as Skarmory's wings. Winona was laughing at her.

"So glad you two get along so well," she said between chuckles, "as it's about a 2 hour flight from here to Lillycove, if you're not afraid of heights. I'd offer to fly you directly to Mossdeep if I could, but I still have to make my rounds this evening, and Skarmory wouldn't be rested enough by then if he flew any longer than that."

"He flies," Ariadne whispered almost to herself, still in awe. "He flies with _passengers_... That's amazing!"

"Passenger," Winona corrected. "Singular. My boy here _is_ amazing but even he has his limits. Speaking of which..." The leader knelt down to gaze at Absol, who was staring silently at the girl he had helped for the past couple of days. "I noticed you've not set foot inside a pokeball in all this time, despite watching this nice young lady like a mother Fearow. You can't both fly to Lillycove if you stay as you are, so this is where you'll have to make a choice, if you want to stay with her. 'Make it official', so to speak."

Ariadne knew what the leader meant. She recognized this moment no matter how many polite explanations or empty promises it was wrapped up in, and for a moment she was furious with herself for forgetting for just a few hours that this always happened. That the rejection came from a magical creature instead of a human made no difference, because the constant was not the species of the friend she thought she made, the constant was her own self. _(hate hate hate hate I'm sorry I'm here I'm sorry I tried I'm sorry)_

Absol watched as Ariadne turned first cold, then blank, then limp with resignation, and felt the sense of disaster he was named for that surrounded her intensify. It _burned_ in her, with a density and depth such as he had never seen outside of the site of a future meteor impact. He huffed and shook himself, equally resigned. As distasteful as confinement might be, he knew the girl would turn him loose, temporarily or permanently any time he wanted. And... he could not in good conscience let her disaster go unaddressed. 

Absol rose, stretched, and sat down again almost on top of Ariadne's feet. She jumped at the touch as though electrocuted and stared down at him without comprehension. 

When Winona took her hand and placed an empty pokeball inside it, she reacted almost robotically. She went through the motions, expecting to be stopped. She wasn't. 

Before Ariadne realized what had happened, Absol was hers.

Moments later, she was flying.


	4. iv. so you try to control it

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's short, but this really is all I had planned for this chapter. It just didn't take as many words as I thought it would.

About an hour of breakneck flight was enough for the dizzying rush of giddiness and joy to wear off, but only just. Securely belted as she was atop the Skarmory in something of a straddled kneeling position where her legs and the bird's wings were least likely to interfere with one another, Ariadne hardly needed to touch the handlebars at the front of the saddle except as reassurance; she couldn't fall if she tried. Skarmory's wings were powerful, and with each downstroke Ariadne could close her eyes and feel, for a moment, almost weightless.

She wondered more than once if this entire world was a dream, if it included an experience like this.

Then they began to descend over the outskirts of a bustling port city, just next to the main road. The landing was necessarily bumpy but, having been around horses her fair share, Ariadne could more or less move her body in tandem with Skarmory's movements so as not to get too jostled. The safety harness' straps retreated with a flick and a press, and she clammored clumsily to the ground, working out the cramps in her calves as the giant bird nosed her with that perpetual smirk. _Amazing trip, but that is not a position human beings are meant to spend 2 hours in... Ow..._

Abruptly, there came a dazzling flash of white light from her right hoodie pocket. When she opened her eyes, Absol was standing next to her, shaking himself as an itchy dog might. Ariadne suppressed a chuckle - on a creature as normally dignified as her Absol, the effect was a little comical. Oddly, he didn't seem to think so, only finished composing himself and walked ahead, with his usual backward glance now and then to check if she was following. With a smile, Ariadne did.

Behind them, Skarmory _hrrrrrr_ 'd in approval, and departed with a rush of wind.

 _Lilycove City_ , said the roadsign upon their arrival, _where the land ends and the sea begins_. And indeed, Ariadne could smell the salt air all the way from there, winding through the buildings and hurtling down the broad streets. Unlike Fortree City which, despite the name, gave off more the appearance of a large village, Lilycove was a true metropolis, set into a vast seaside hill that was carved out into shelves. Once past the residental homes in the surrounding suburbs, the throngs of bustling people grew more and more dense. Such crowds would normally have given Ariadne pause, but woven into them, trotting by their humans' sides or hitching a ride on their shoulders or flying overhead, were more unknown creatures - more _pokemon_. 

A wealthy-looking man in a suit walked by with a cream-colored cat the size of a panther padding demurely by his side. Sitting on a fence near the side of the road was a teen girl in dark clothes conversing casually with an equally dark colored bird that was, for some unfathomable reason, wearing a large floppy witch's hat. Yet more birds crowded and cawed in the sky and along the edges of rooftops, things that would have been seagulls were it not for their thick, parrot-like beaks. Ariadne staired long and amazed at every one she saw, and burst into a fit of giggles when one of the seagulls landed a dropping squarely on the rim of a little boy's baseball cap. The child shrieked as the whitish goo dripped in front of his eyes, and ran indoors.

"No need to feel sorry for him," said a cool, whispery voice that, oddly, did not make Ariadne jump at the sound. The girl on the fence was stroking her bird and staring at her. "That's Alex; he comes out every day to throw rocks at the Wingulls' nest on the roof to make the sticks rain down. Most days they put up with it and rebuild, but laying season just started, so they're being a bit more proactive."

Ariadne considered. "Sometimes birds just poop on people. It's something to get used to."

The girl stroked her bird's angular beak; it made a _muurrrrrr_ sort of sound, almost like purring. Then she stood up. "Your name is Ariadne?"

"Um. Yes." Ariadne declined to ask the obvious question, opting instead for, "What's your's?"

"People just call me Memory Girl around here," she said, smiling gently, "because I can read the memories of pokemon. Would you like to know about your pokemon's memories?"

Ariadne blinked, then looked at Absol, who just looked back at her. "O...kay?"

Memory Girl knelt down so her face was level with and very close to Absol's, who tilted his head but otherwise looked unruffled by the invasion of personal space. "This Absol," she said slowly, "remembers meeting Ariadne on Route 120, in the same place where a mudslide on a rainy night almost killed three travellers."

"Wow," Ariadne said. "Were they okay?"

"Oh yes," said the Memory Girl as she stood up and smoothed her skirt. "The Absol's presence alerted them to the impending disaster, and they were able to spend the night in a sturdy tree nearby."

Ariadne looked down at Absol again. Absol absently scratched himself with a foot.

"Well," she said, "thanks for the story. I've got to run though."

"Come back any time!" Memory Girl said cheerily. "Memories never fade away."

 _Unfortunately for most_ , thought Ariadne. They walked on.

-

Further down the road and to her left, a markedly denser crowd of some size gathered around an attractive red brick building, shouting and cheering for something or other. Ariadne would have avoided the noise on principle, but as she walked by, a column of silvery dust coming from the center of the group caught her eye. She turned to look just as the dust caught fire in an impressive sparkling tornado.

What everyone was actually crowding _around_ was a handful of adolescents and their pokemon practicing for something... presumably that something would later take place inside the building? Two of them - a teenager with brown pigtails and a child of about eight - were staring in awe at the glittering fire column as it dissipated.

"That... was... _AWESOME!_ " shrieked the pigtailed girl, jumping around in delight. "Beautifly, do you think you could learn a fire attack somehow? We _need_ to replicate that on stage!" Onlookers chuckled or shook their heads. Most of them were still applauding or chatting their own commentary, but Ariadne heard a few responses:

"Bug-types need to stay far away from fire, girlie..."

"Might Solar Beam work? It could make the dust catch fire..."

"Dunno, but it'd be difficult to work inside the Contest Hall..."

Ariadne's gaze slid toward the other center of attention, who looked rather nervous at having accidentally set someone else's performance on fire. The little boy and his - dog? It was some sort of black Great Dane puppy with white ribbing like crude armor - snuck furtively away from the crowd. Ariadne could relate.

Only instead of running completely off, the pair stopped once they were out of everyone's way and continued practicing. Trying to focus on what the girl was doing among the noisy crowd made Ariadne's brain hurt, but this she could watch. So she did.

"Okay Houndour," he began in a soft voice, "start with Ember, and don't hit anything this time!"

The puppy took a deep breath, and carefully exhaled a multitude of hot glowing motes.

"Now use Night Slash on 'em!"

With an eager bark, the puppy then raised a paw and clawed at the air. Where its claws passed, the air turned dark in jagged cresents, which propelled themselves forward, dragging the burning embers through the air in their wake before the whole thing dissipated. 

Ariadne found herself with her hand to her face, mouth agape. Firebreathing was one thing, she'd expected it at this point. But some sort of... light bending? Messing around with inertia? This was new, and gave Ariadne the sense that alien biology wasn't the only thing at play here when it came to these creatures.

Absol was looking at her. "This is normal?" she asked him softly.

He tilted his head, then gestured to a nearby shrub. He rolled his head along his neck, and as he did so, his horn glowed an incandescent white. Another swing, and the whiteness left his horn and sped through the air at the shrub, slicing it neatly in two.

Ariadne looked between Absol and the shrub. Absol sat and looked at her. She cautiously placed a few fingers on the flat of his horn-blade. It was cool, its soft peach-fuzz texture unchanged.

"Huh," she said.

-

For the relative grandeur of the rest of the city, Lilycove harbor was fairly empty and desolate. The wharf where the ferry was housed was little more than a mostly-empty warehouse with a garage door to the tiny cove outside, all exposed-pipe ceilings and echoed footsteps. It was her ears more than her eyes that told Ariadne how empty the place was. "Did I come at the wrong time?" she wondered.

"No, miss," said the man at the edge of the dock, a distracted-looking fellow who was mostly busy with his cell phone. "We'll take you wherever you want to go. Just the locals would rather surf their pokemon across the bay than pay a fare."

Ariadne's stomach twisted. "F-fare? I was told... I didn't..."

"Hm?" He looked up from his phone game at her. "Oh, no! it's just a voluntary donation, don't worry if you didn't bring anything!" He gestured at the emptiness around him. "The city keeps the ferry running on taxpayer dime for tourists in the summer, but that just pays our wages. As you can see, there's little else around here, so we're looking to spruce up the place if we can. Where to?"

Ariadne took a breath, said, "Mossdeep City, please," and almost smiled. Her voice didn't even shake.

_It's the little victories._

"Not a problem. Just let me fetch the captain."

And they were off.


End file.
